USA > New York > Westchester County > History of Westchester County, New York, from its earliest settlement to the year 1900 > Part 27
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fuffer any Subject to animadvert on his Actions, when it is in his Pow- er to declare the Crime, and to nomi- nate the Punifhment ? This would make it very dangerous to exercife fuch a Liberty Befides the Object againft which thole Pens muft be directed, is per adequate Punifhment ; the leveres Conftir
PAGE FROM ZENGER'S JOURNAL.
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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY
Zenger's lawyer. No other attitude was to have been expected, how- over, of New York City, with its largely preponderant element of tradespeople and other plain citizens, who were substantially united in opposition to offensive manifestations of power. But in West- chester County, dominated to so great an extent by conservative landlords, the case was widely different. In this county the real battle was fought and won, determining unmistakably the exist- ence of a decisive majority against royal oppression among the pro- ple of the province at large. Nothing is more interesting in con- nection with the Westchester electoral contest of 1733 than the fact that the lines of local division upon which it was fought were pre- cisely the ones that divided the rival Whig and Loyalist factions of the county when they came to make their trial of strength forty years later on the issue of co-operation or non-co-operation with the general cause of the American colonies. At the historic meeting of the freehollers of Westchester County held at White Plains on the 11th of April, 1775, the contending parties were again led by the heads of the Morris and Philipse families-Lewis Morris, 3d, grand- son of the chief justice, and Frederick Philipse, 3d, son of the Judge Philipse of Cosby's Court of Chancery. And the result was the same as on the first occasion-a complete triumph for the Morris party, representing, as before, the principle of non-obedience to objection- able government.
Lewis Morris, the deposed chief justice, upon re-entering the as- sembly became at once the leader of the popular forces in that body. It being decided to send a representative to England to inform the home government of Cosby's bad acts, and if possible get him re- called, Morris was selected to go on that errand. He made the journey in 1734, duly laid the grievances of the colonists before the privy council, and procured a decision prononneing the grounds of his own removal from the chief justiceship inadequate, but received no further satisfaction. Soon afterward, in 1736, Cosby died. Morris, upon his return to America, was very warmly greeted by the people. Notwithstanding his prominent connection with the events whose history we have traced, and in spite of the comparative failure of his mission to England, he retained the friendship and appreciation of influential men at the British court, and was, in 1738, appointed colonial governor of New Jersey, a position which he continued to hold until his death, May 21, 1746. He left. his Morrisania property jointly to his son Lewis and his widow, directing that the whole should go to the former upon the latter's death. His New Jersey property he bequeathed to another son, Robert Hunter Morris, who held, at the time of the father's death, the distinguished office of
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chief justice of that province. Lewis Morris, Sr., represented the County of Westchester in the provincial assembly until his appoint- ment as governor of New Jersey, when he resigned, retiring perma- nently from public life in New York.
Chief Justice Morris gave his Manor of Morrisania to his ellest son, Lewis, third of the name, who was known by his contempora- ries, and is referred to in all historical works, as Lewis Morris, JJr. He was the father of Colonel Lewis Morris, the signer of the Declara- tion of Independence; of the still more noted statesman, Gouverneur Morris; of Judge Richard Morris, successor to John Jay as chief justice of the Supreme Court of New York State; and of General Staats Long Morris, of the British army.
Lewis Morris, Jr., third proprietor and second lord of the Morris estates in Westchester County, was born September 23, 1698. Most of his political career was contemporaneous with that of his father, which it closely resembled in its general characteris- ties. Ile was a deputy for Westchester Borough in the general assembly from 1732 to 1750, serving as speaker in 1737. Previously to entering the assembly he had been a member of the governor's council for some years, but had been removed from that body in 1730 because of his deter- mined opposition to the policies of Governor Montgomerie. He was, in- deed, quite as heartily disliked by PETER FANEUIL. Montgomerie as his father was by Cosby, and apparently for quite similar reasons. In justification
of his course in the council he wrote a very able letter to the English government, which is a luminous presentation of the par- tisan differences of the time. When the great popular issue arose in 1733 on the Van Dam salary question he was a zealous supporter of his father's cause. Cosby, in his denunciatory communications to the Lords of Trade respecting the attitude of Chief Justice Morris, speaks with savage resentment of the son also, who, he says, having " got himself elected an assemblyman for a borough, gave all the opposition he could to the measures the house took to make the gov- ermment easy." With this wanton behavior of the junior Morris, Cosby continues, the father was well pleased, "wherein without
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doubt he had an eye on the Boston assembly,1 whose spirit begins to diffuse itself too much amongst the other provinces." During the absence of the deposed chief justice in England (1734-36) the son took his place here in public leadership. After Cosby's death, early in 1736, an animated controversy sprang up concerning the legality of the accession of Clarke, at that time president of the council, to the position of lieutenant-governor, the popular faction declaring his assumption of power to be irregular. This was the occasion of nu- merons official letters of complaint by the unhappy lieutenant-gov- ernor. He related how Morris and his son, Van Dam, Smith, and Alexander had by their long-continued acts " wrought the people to a pitch of rebellion." " These are the men," he said, " who declaim against the king's prerogative, who poison the minds of the people, who libel the governor and all in authority in weekly printed papers, and who have endeavored to distress the governor in his just ad- ministration." He went so far as to recommend, as a drastic remedy, that the younger Morris and others be sent to England for sedition, a thing which he regretted he could not venture to do without orders, because " forbidden by His Majesty's instructions to send any pris- oners to England without sufficient proof of their crimes to be trans- mitted with them." They were a. worrisome set, these Morrises, to royal governors having a fancy for arbitrary power and a strong dis- taste for popular interference with their executive ease.
The younger Morris was also a judge of the Court of Admiralty, and at one time a judge of the Court of Over and Terminer. He was twice married, his first wife being Catherine Staats, and his second Sarah Gouverneur. Like his father, he possessed a positive tempera- ment, an unbending will, and a rather domineering manner. His uncompromising disposition in all matters of opinion and feeling is well illustrated by the celebrated direction given in his will re- garding the education of his son Gouverneur. " It is my wish," he says, " that my son Gouverneur shall have the best education that can be furnished him in England or America, but my express will and directions are that under no circumstances shall he be sent to the Colony of Connectient for that purpose, lest in his youth he should imbibe that low craft and cunning so incident to the people of that country, and which are so interwoven in their constitution that they van not conceal it from the world, though many of them, under the sanctified garb of religion, have attempted to impose themselves upon the world as honest men."
1 lt was during the period of the events re- corded in this chapter that Faneuil Hall. identified so conspicuously with the subsequent agitation for American liberty, was built in Boston. Peter Faneuil, for whom it was named. was a native of our Town of New Rochelle, whence he went to Boston in the year 1720, at the age of eighteen. His uncle Andrew was a wealthy merchant of that elty,
and Peter obtained employment with him and inherited hls fortune. In 1740 the people of Roston were divided in opinion upon the ques- tion of the erection nf a new Central Market Hall. and much bitter feeling was aronsed. Thereupon, Peter Faneull, actuated by puhlie spirit, erected Faneul] Hall, and presented It to the city.
1
CHAPTER XIII
THE ARISTOCRATIC FAMILIES AND THEIR INFLUENCES
HE great Manor of Philipseburgh at the death of its founder, the first Frederick Philipse, November 6, 1702, was divided between two heirs, his son, Adolphus or Adolph, and his grandson, Frederick. Adolph took the northern portion, extending on the south to the present Dobbs Ferry and bounded on the west by the Hudson River, on the north by a line running from the mouth of the Croton to the sources of the Bronx, and on the east by the Bronx River. Frederick's share, also reaching from the IIndson to the Bronx, had for its southern limits Spusten Duyvil Creek and the line of Fordham Manor. In this divided condition the manor remained until the death of Adolph in 1749, when, as no issue survived him, it was consolidated under the sole ownership of Fred- erick. By him the whole manor was transmitted at his death in 1751 to his eldest son, the third Frederick, who continued in pos- session of it until the Revolution.
When the first Frederick Philipse died, the manor had been in ex- istence only nine years. But he had previously devoted many years to the purchase of the estate and its gradual preparation for aristo- eratie pretensions, had built two mansions, one on the Nepperhan and one on the Pocantico, had established well-equipped mills, and had encouraged the coming of tenants by giving them land on the most liberal terms. After the erection of the manor he was active in various ways in improving the property and promoting its avail- ability for permanent settlement. He built across the Spurten Duyvil Creek, in 1694, the first bridge connecting the mainland with Manhattan Island, which has been known from that day to this as the King's Bridge. Having established his permanent country resi- dence at Castle Philipse, on the present site of Tarrytown, he built near there the first church in the western section of the county-the far-famed Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow.1 In a communication from
: Sre p. 163. While the present History has lien going through the press, there has been published a little book entitled, " First Record Book of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hol- low. Organized in 1697, and now the First Re- formed Church of Tarrytown, N. Y. An orig- Inal translation of its brief historical matter. and a reproduction, faithful to the letter of
wory personal and local name, of Its four great registers of members, consistorymen, baptisms, and marriages, from its organization to the end of the eighteenth century. Translated and copied from the original, and carefully prouf- read. by Rev. David Cole, D.D., Yonkers. N. Y."
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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY
Governor Bellomont to the Lords of Trade, written in 1698, it is stated that at that time there were not more than twenty " poor families " in the whole Manor of Philipseburgh; but there are strong reasons for regarding this as an utterly unreliable estimate. Bello- mont was a governor of reform tendencies, and was particularly un- sparing in his denunciations of the enormous land grants of his predecessors. He naturally wished to make these grants appear in as bad a light as possible, and so, in writing upon the subject to his superiors, represented that practically nothing had been done by the grantees toward populating their lands. It is unquestion- able that the first lord of the manor laid substantial foundations for its development and transmitted it to his successors in a condition of reasonably good preparedness for rapid progress. At the census of 1712, only ten years after his death, the population of Philipseburgh Manor was 608-more than one-fifth of the whole population of the county.
All of the first Frederick's children Were the offspring of his first wife, Mar- garet Hardenbrook De Vries. His ser- ond wife, Catherina, a sister of Stephanus Van Cortlandt and widow of John Der- vall, survived him many years, dying in 1730. She lived with her stepson, Adolph, at Castle Philipse, and was universally beloved for her gentle and pions char-
acter. In the records of the Sleepy Hol- GOVERNOR BELLOMONT. low church she is spoken of as "the Right Honorable, Godfearing, very wise and prudent Lady Catherine Philipse." By her will she left to the congregation of that church a chalice bearing her name, a baptismal bowl. and a damask cloth.
Both Adolph and Frederick, the surviving male heirs of the first lord, were men of mark and influence, not only as Westchester County landlords, but in the general concerns of the province. Adolph was his second son and Frederick his grandson-the only child of his eldest son, Philip, who died on the Island of Barbadoes in 1700.
Adolph Philipse was born in New York City, November 15, 1665. lle was reared to mercantile pursuits, and according to all accounts was, like his father, a shrewd and successful man of affairs. From old official documents it appears that he was his father's trusted and active lieutenant in the conduet of delicate transactions with the piratical skippers of the Indian Ocean. Notorious as were the rela-
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THE ARISTOCRATIC FAMILIES
tions which Philipse and others sustained with the pirates, it was of course not safe for the pirate ships to attempt to deliver their cargoes at New York, or even to rendezvous within too close prox- imity to that port. It was the custom to dispatch from New York vessels to meet them at more or less distant points along the coast, which vessels, after receiving their valuable merchandise, would either return to the vicinity of New York and await opportunity to smuggle the stuff in, or sail to Europe and dispose of it there. Adolph was the discreet representative of the house of Philipse in the man- agement of these important details. In a memorable report of the British Board of Trade, October 19, 1698, on the connections sub- sisting between the New York merchants and the pirates, the opera- tions of the clever Adolph in one instance are explicitly described. A ship or sloop called the " Frederick," belonging to Frederick Philipse, at that time " one of his Majesty's Comeil of New York," was, " upon expectation of a vessel from Madagascar," sent ont under the con- duet of Adolph Philipse. This was " upon pretence of a voyage to Virginia, but really to ernize at sea, in order to meet the said vessel from Madagascar. Upon meeting of that vessel great parcells of East India goods were by direction of the said Adolphus Philipse taken out of her, and put aboard the said sloop . Frederick,' with which, by his order, she sayled to Delaware Bay and lay there privately. He in ye meanwhile returned in the Madagascar ship (having then only negroes on board to New York, and after some days came again to the . Frederick ' sloop in Delaware Bay. There the said sloop deliv- ered some small part of East India cargo, and from thence, by his direction, sayled with the rest (North about Scotland) to Hamburgh, where some seizure having been made by Sir Paul Ricant dlis Maj- esty's Resident there), and the men sent hither (London), they have each of them severally made depositions relating to that matter bo- fore Sir Charles Hedges, Judge of the Admirality. We observe that Cornelius Jacobs (the master) appears to be the same Capn. Jacobs who is named to have traded with the Pirates." Relations with the pirates on the part of Frederick and Adolph Philipse being thus established to the satisfaction of the authorities in England, both father and son fell under the disfavor of the government. Frederick Philipse was forced to give up the seat in the conneil which he had held for a score of years; and Adolph, who had been nominated for membership in that body a short time previously by Governor Bello- mont, was pronounced unworthy of such an honor, and his name was withdrawn. But the disgrace was only a passing cloud. No judicial proceedings were taken against either of the Philipses. The
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father died soon after, and the son was graciously forgiven in due time.
Adolph Philipse in the year before this episode of the " Frederick " had become on his own account one of the principal land owners of the province. On the 17th of June, 1697, Governor Fletcher granted to him a patent (known historically as "The Great Highland Patent ") for the territory immediately above Westchester County, running from the Hudson to the Connecticut line, a distance of some twenty miles, and extending northward abont twelve miles. Out of the patent thus conferred Putnam County (then a portion of Dutchess County) has since been erected. The sole consideration charged for the grant was a " Yearly Rent of twenty Shillings Currant money of our said Province," payable upon the feast day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Adolph Philipse, at his death, left the Highland Patent, with all his other landed possessions, to his nephew, the second Frederick, who divided it equally among his three chil- dren-Frederick (30), Mary, wife of Roger Morris, a colonel in the British army, and Susannah, wife of Colonel Beverly Robin- son, also a noted Tory. The whole patent was partitioned off into three parts and nine lots, each child receiving one-third part and three lots. The lots acquired by Colonel Robinson and Major Morris, says GOVERNOR BURNET. Blake in his " History of Putnam Coun- ty," were confiscated by the legisla- ture, but the reversionary interest was not affected by this action. and that interest was purchased of the heirs for $100,000 by the first John JJacob Astor, who ten years afterward received for it from the State of New York $500,000 in State stock at six per cent.
AAfter the death of his father, Adolph became the head of the family, a position which he divided with his nephew. Frederick, when the latter came of age. On the 7th of February, 1705, he was ap- pointed a member of the governor's council, and in 1718 he was made one of the commissioners for running the boundary line between New York and Connecticut. He was removed from the council in 1721, on the representation of Governor Burnet, for opposing the con- tinuance of the assembly after His Excellency's arrival. In 1722 he was elected a member of the assembly from Westchester County, of which body he was chosen speaker in 1725. Ile sat for West-
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THE ARISTOCRATIC FAMILIES
chester County until the election of 1726, being then returned as one of the four members from New York City. He occupied the speaker's chair until 1737, when he lost his seat; but at an election held soon afterward to fill a vacancy from the city he was onee more returned, although, it was charged, only by means of the "most barefaced villany " practiced in his behalf by the sheriff. He was again chosen speaker in 1739, and remained as such until 1745, when, at the age of eighty, his legislative career was terminated. He died in 1749. Ile was never married.
li is thus seen that Adolph Philipse was one of the most important publie characters of his times, being speaker of the assembly for eighteen years. His retirement as a member for Westchester County was in the interest of his nephew, Frederick, who promptly took the seat that he vacated, retaining it withont any interruption for twenty-four years.
In the memories of the people of Westchester County the name of Philipse is, from the political point of view, identified exclusively with the idea of ultra devotion to royal anthority in the person of the king's constituted representative. It is hence an extremely enri- ous fact that, six years before the removal of Lewis Morris from the chief justiceship, Adolph Philipse, the senior member of this family, gave his voice and exercised his official power in exactly the same cause as that to which Morris became a martyr-the cause of oppo- sition to the Court of Chancery as an extra-constitutional organiza- tion, none the less (indeed, all the more) illegal and odious because finding its sole warrant for existence in the governor's prerogative. In 1727 we find Governor Burnet bitterly complaining to the Lords of Trade abont some " extraordinary resolves " concerning the Conrt of Chancery, " which," he says, " was all done at the suggestion of their speaker, who had lately lost a canse in chancery." Philipse, he continues, had " the least reason of any man to disown the Court of Chancery, for he himself was a member of conneil when that court was established by the council and when the Lords of Trade ap- proved that establishment, and he himself three years ago being cast in a suit at common law brought it into chancery and obtained some relief from it." Burnet intimates that the conduet of Speaker Phil- ipse in this matter was not occasioned by any high sense of principle. but was merely personal; and certainly Philipse had no cause in this connection, or regarding any other question of policy, to make him- self specially complaisant toward Governor Burnet, who had pro- cured his dismissal from the council. On the other hand, antago- nisam to the Court of Chancery was emphatically a popular cause. only less so in degree (because of the less emergent circumstances)
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in Burnet's time than in Cosby's; and whatever personal motives may have influenced Philipse's course, that course could not be sepa- rated from association with the popular feeling. Adolph Philipse, moreover, was never an intense partisan; and his long-continued service as speaker of the assembly is sufficient testimony to the general fairness and acceptability of his political disposition. He always adhered to the simple religious faith in which he had been brought up, that of the Dutch Reformed Church, although the Church of England increasingly claimed the attachment of the rich, powerful, and ambitions; and it occasioned grievous regret to the Episcopalians that a man of his prominence should be so conspicu-
SAINT JOHN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, YONKERS,
ously unidentified with " the" Church. His public character has been summed up in words of unqualified approval by the eminent patriot and statesman, JJohn Jay. " He was," says JJay, " a man of superior talents, well educated, sedate, highly respected, and popular. Except that he was penurions, I have heard nothing to his disadvantage."
Frederick Philipse, 2d, co-heir with his uncle Adolph under the will of the first lord of the manor, was born on the Island of Bar- badoes in 1695. Ilis parents were Philip, eldest son of Frederick and Margaret Philipse, and Maria, daughter of Governor Sparks, of Bar- badoes. Philip Philipse, born in New York City in 1663, went to
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THE ARISTOCRATIC FAMILIES
Barbadoes to reside on an estate of his father's called Spring Head. Frederick was the only child, and was left an orphan at the age of five. His grandfather, who was still living, thereupon sold the Bar- badoes property, and the boy was sent to England to be reared by his mother's people. There he remained until his early manhood, en- joying every educational and social advantage which wealth and dis- tingnished connections could give. Although from these associa- tions he derived marked aristocratic predilections, which, in turn. were inbred in his children, and became the cause of their undoing in the evil days of the Revolution, his character, as thus formed, was that of an accomplished and amiable gentleman, quite free from corrupt and arrogant traits. By his tenants and the public he was always known as " Lord " Philipse, and his personality well corres- ponded to his title. " Lle was," says Mrs. Lamb, " polished in his manners, hospitable, generous, cordial, manly. His cultivated Enro- pean tastes were soon distinguishable in his improvements. The manor house swelled into thrice its former size, and was beautiful in innumerable ways. The two entrances on the new eastern front were ornamented with eight columns and corresponding pilasters. A broad, velvety lawn appeared skirted by garden ter- races, horse chestnuts, and the old Albany and New York Post Road, above which rose Locust Hill. To the right and left were laid out gardens and grounds, in which flourished valuable trees and choice shrubs and flowers, and through which, in all directions, stretched graveled walks, bordered with box. To the west the green- sward sloped gradually toward the river, dotted with fine specimens of ornamental trees, and was emparked and stocked with deer. The roof of the manor house was surmounted by a heavy line of balus- trade, forming a terrace, which commanded an extensive view. The interior of the new part was elaborately finished. The walls were wainscoted, and the ceilings highly ornamented in arabesque work. The marble mantels were imported from England, and were curious specimens of ancient art in the way of carving. The main halls of the entrance were about fourteen feet wide, and the superb stair- cases, with their mahogany handrails and balusters, were propor- tionately broad. The city establishment of the family was, in its interior arrangements, quite as pretentious as the manor house, and it was where the courtly aristocracy of the province were wont to meet in gay and joyous throng." " It was he," says Allison in his " History of Yonkers," " who enlarged the Manor House on the Nop- perhan in 1745, by extending it to the north, changing its front to the east, and giving it its imposing array of windows, its too por-
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